Lead Technical Program Manager Fraud Technology

Citi
Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India

The Lead Technical Program Manager, Fraud Technology is responsible for driving end-to-end technology governance, architectural alignment, and delivery execution for Citi’s Enterprise Fraud Prevention initiatives. In this role, you will serve as a technical authority navigating critical cross-functional dependencies across distributed engineering squads, data science teams, core platform services, and risk/compliance partners. You will blend deep systems acumen with executive presence and crisp, diplomatic communication to guide multi-million-dollar programs from architectural discovery through production rollout. This position requires an in-depth understanding of how sub-functional units integrate end-to-end, as well as the ability to coordinate across diverse groups to achieve broad organizational objectives.

Key Responsibilities

End-to-End Program Delivery & Strategic Roadmap Execution

  • Lead end-to-end technology planning, execution, and delivery governance across complex, mission-critical programs within Citi’s Fraud Technology Book of Work.
  • Define, baseline, and track program milestones, critical paths, and deliverable commitments across multiple agile squads and hybrid legacy/modernized distributed platforms.
  • Proactively manage complex cross-program dependencies, identifying technical bottlenecks, architectural conflicts, and resource constraints early to formulate and execute effective mitigation plans.
  • Establish rigorous Definition of Done (DoD), release readiness criteria, and robust operational cutover strategies tailored for high-throughput, ultra-low-latency financial transaction systems.

Architecture Alignment, Dependency Management & Systems Integration

  • Guide stakeholders and engineering squads through complex trade-off evaluations, balancing business priorities, customer experience, platform strategy, performance benchmarks, and long-term maintainability.
  • Facilitate technical architecture reviews, interface design agreements (REST/SOAP APIs, Kafka/event-driven streaming), and binding cross-team integration contracts.
  • Apply deep technical domain knowledge across core software engineering disciplines, including microservices architectures, distributed API protocols, hybrid cloud and on-premise infrastructure, and resilient data layers.

AI-Augmented Program Management & Operational Excellence

  • Champion and integrate modern Generative AI (GenAI) and automated tooling to streamline and modernize traditional program management workflows:
  • Automate the synthesis of complex technical discussions, action items, and Architectural Decision Records (ADRs).
  • Accelerate the generation of executive dashboards, release notes, and milestone variance analytics.
  • Standardize AI-driven delivery best practices, prompts, and reporting templates across participating engineering teams.

Executive Presence & Stakeholder Communication

  • Serve as the primary strategic liaison between engineering teams and executive leadership, articulating delivery health, technical trade-offs, blockers, and architectural risks with clarity, precision, and business context.
  • Influence, negotiate, and align cross-functional stakeholders across organizational boundaries without formal line authority.
  • Author and deliver high-impact executive collateral (executive one-pagers, steering committee presentations, risk heatmaps) and crisp briefings to Senior Leadership (MD/C-suite level).
  • Cultivate strong collaborative partnerships across business units, external technology vendors, operations, internal audit, and technology peers.

Risk, Governance, and Control Management

  • Proactively identify, evaluate, track, and remediate technical program risks, architectural vulnerabilities, and control deficiencies across all delivery tiers.
  • Ensure strict compliance with Citi’s Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) governance, architecture review board standards, data governance policies, and relevant regulatory mandates (e.g., OCC, Federal Reserve, PCI-DSS, Model Risk Management).
  • Champion operational resilience and release integrity, enforcing zero-unauthorized-change policies, comprehensive automated rollback strategies, and stringent incident management protocols.

Qualifications & Competencies

Experience & Domain Expertise

  • 8+ years of experience in Technical Program Management, Technology Project Management, Engineering Delivery, or related technology leadership roles managing large-scale enterprise initiatives.
  • 2+ years of experience supporting payments, fintech, fraud prevention, risk management, or other highly regulated technology environments utilizing Agile, Scrum, SAFe, or Hybrid delivery frameworks.
  • Strong technical fluency in modern software architecture patterns, including microservices, REST/SOAP APIs, event-driven architectures (Kafka/MQ), hybrid cloud/on-prem environments, and distributed database systems.
  • Experience coordinating cross-functional teams, managing dependencies, tracking critical-path milestones, and supporting vendor integrations in matrixed organizations.
  • Demonstrated ability to deliver complex technology initiatives from planning through production deployment.

Project Management & AI Tooling

  • PMP, PMI-ACP, CSM, SAFe, or comparable project/program management certification preferred.
  • Hands-on experience with enterprise delivery, portfolio, and collaboration tools including Jira, Confluence, Jira Align, MS Project, and ServiceNow.
  • Experience utilizing AI-enabled productivity tools (e.g., Copilot, LLMs, or enterprise AI platforms) to support reporting, documentation, meeting synthesis, and delivery management activities.

Leadership & Communication

  • Demonstrated ability to facilitate stakeholder discussions, drive consensus, and influence technical and business partners in a cross-functional environment.
  • Excellent written and verbal communication skills with the ability to translate technical concepts into clear business-focused messaging.
  • Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with the ability to manage competing priorities and navigate ambiguity.

Education

  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems, Business Technology, or a related discipline. Master's degree preferred.

Other Relevant Skills Delivery Management, Project Management, Stakeholder Management

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Job Family Group:

Technology

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Job Family:

Business Analysis / Client Services

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Time Type:

Full time

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Most Relevant Skills

Please see the requirements listed above.

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Other Relevant Skills

For complementary skills, please see above and/or contact the recruiter.

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